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Lessons learned from the horrific Virginia Tech shootings in 2007 are credited with averting an even bigger massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, Thursday afternoon when police officer Kimberly Munley confronted the gunman without waiting for backup and took him down with four shots. Reviews in the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech, where 32 died, found that first responders' decision to be careful and wait for backup probably cost lives as that gunman moved unchecked from classroom to classroom as law enforcement massed outside. Those findings had found their way to Fort Hood's Special Reaction Team, which had practiced...

American heavy metal band Metallica has stumped up 50,000 dollars in reward money for a fan who disappeared at one of their concerts, a campaign website said Monday. Police have been searching for blond-haired, blue-eyed Virginia Tech student Morgan Harrington, 20, since she went missing from a Metallica concert in Charlottesville, Virginia on the evening of Saturday, October 17.... "The Band Metallica is also adding an additional 50,000 dollars to the reward bringing it to 150,000 dollars for Morgan's safe return or information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Morgan's disappearance," it said....

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. (AP) — Police searched Tuesday for a Virginia Tech student who hasn't been seen since she was separated from her friends at a Metallica concert Saturday. Morgan Dana Harrington, 20, was last seen near the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville. Her parents said they talk to her every day and her disappearance is very out of character.

Lynchburg, VA - Supporters of the Second Amendment gathered Friday afternoon at the Liberty University (web) School of Law for a gun rights symposium. The discussion of current legal cases turned into a cry for help from students at Virginia Tech. Some Virginia Tech students even skipped class to do it. Alyson Boyce with VT Students for Concealed Carry President said, "Two and a half years ago, if you would have asked me anything about gun rights, I would not have been able to tell you a thing. Now, Boyce is the president of the Hokie Chapter of Students for...

I wonder why the same poeple opposing voter ID are the same favoring IRV ? why are "progressives" often on this bandwagon?

The funeral services for two Virginia Tech sophomores who apparently were shot to death last week in the Caldwell Fields section of the Jefferson National Forest are scheduled for today in Lynchburg. As of Sunday evening, the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office still was seeking leads for the shooting, which they believe occurred either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. Services for David Lee Metzler, 19, of Lynchburg and Heidi Lynn Childs, 18, of Forest will be held at Heritage Baptist Church, which both students attended. Metzler's service will be at 1 p.m., while Childs' will be at 3 p.m. Each service...

Missing mental health records of Virginia Tech gunman Seung-Hui Cho have been discovered in the home of the university clinic's former director, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday. The memo said the records were removed from the Cook Counseling Center on the Virginia Tech campus more than a year before the shootings. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090722/ap_on_re_us/us_virginia_tech_shooting

A participant of a summer camp on Tech's campus has been confirmed by Schiffert Health Center to have a case of H1N1 influenza, according to an e-mail to on-campus students from Housing and Dining Services. The H1N1 influenza virus, also known as swine flu, recently hit pandemic status in early June, indicating widespread global activity, as defined by the World Health Organization. According to the Center for Disease Control website, the pandemic status only reflects the spread of the virus to over 70 countries and not its severity. Housing's e-mail, sent by Associate Director for Occupancy Management Kenneth Belcher, clarified...

Wednesday, July 1 BRATTLEBORO -- The jury began deliberations Tuesday in the second-degree murder trial of David Boglioli. After closing statements by Deputy State's Attorney David Gartenstein and defense attorney Matthew Harnett, the jury must decide whether to find Boglioli guilty of second-degree murder in the shooting death of his neighbor, George Riccitelli, or if he was defending himself from being beaten with an ax handle. If convicted of second-degree murder, Boglioli will face a sentence of 20 years to life in prison. Prior to the closing statements, Harnett called Scott Kriger, a toxicology expert, to the stand. Kriger testified...

BURLINGTON, Vt. – Like plenty of other high school students, a group of about a dozen Vermont teenagers trundled into a youth center one day every week this spring to participate in an after-school program. But their program was different; it focused on gender. The nine-week program, partially funded by the Burlington School District, was held at Vermont's Queer Youth Center and called "Gendertopia." Gay, lesbian and straight students discussed a wide range of topics, from the characters in the book and movie "Twilight," to taking photos around the city that show the different ways gender is portrayed in popular...

BLACKSBURG -- They were: The apple of a parent's eye. A collector of friends. Brilliant. Warm. They dreamed. Volunteered. Had smiles that made others smile. They were 32 people who Virginia Tech paused yesterday to remember and to honor, on the second anniversary of the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. Under a cloudless sky, 3,000 gathered: families, friends, faculty -- the community of Virginia Tech -- to reflect on those who died.

RADFORD, Va. (AP) -- Radford University officials have put the campus on lockdown and asked students to seek shelter as police search for a man suspected of shooting someone near the campus. Radford Police Chief Don Goodman says the shooting happened around 9 p.m. Thursday. The victim hasn't been identified.

"... not one, but two, of President John Tyler's grandsons are still alive."

RUTLAND, Vt. — First-grader Isabella doesn’t yet understand all the big decisions that judges here in Vermont and Virginia have made about her life.But her mother, Lisa Miller, knows how profoundly those court orders will affect her 6-year-old. Miller’s attorneys even petitioned this landmark custody case she’s fighting with her former lesbian partner to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the court declined to hear it.Isabella has been the subject of a five-year battle that has pitted conflicting state marriage statutes and drawn competing claims from federal laws.“It’s rather like the two women claiming one baby before Solomon. One is the...

No details yet. Alert sent to all students: VT Police have confirmed a murder in the Graduate Life Center. A suspect is in custody. Stay where you are and stay vigilant. Stay away for GLC. 8:16pm

With 41 percent of Tech's traveling roster having never played a college football game, the Hokies' opener against East Carolina this Saturday could be a tough match-up. "We're dressing 10 true freshmen and 15 redshirt freshmen," Virginia Tech head football coach Frank Beamer said. "It's a little bit scary ... We lost a couple kids from last year, but we are very impressed with our freshman class." That is not to say Tech has no veterans on the team, but with only a few at each position, the freshmen will need to step up quickly in order to fend off...

ELIZABETH CITY, N.C. — Elizabeth City State University is offering counseling to faculty and students after some became unknowing participants in an emergency response drill.The News & Observer of Raleigh reported in Wednesday's editions that an armed man burst into a classroom Friday, threatening to kill students. The drill came eight days after a gunman killed five people and himself in a classroom at Northern Illinois University.Anthony Brown, vice chancellor of student affairs, said ECSU was testing its response to such shootings. E-mail and text messages were sent five days before the drill, notifying students, staff and faculty, he said....

MONTPELIER, Vt. (AP) — For many who lived through Vermont's not-so-civil debate over civil unions, the memories remain painfully fresh: hate mail, threatening telephone messages, tense public meetings. This time around, as the state weighs whether to legalize gay marriage, the debate is noticeably tamer with little of the vitriol and recrimination that surrounded its groundbreaking 2000 decision to legally recognize gay and lesbian couples. It's early: Lawmakers say they're unlikely to push for a vote this year on pending legislation that would legalize gay marriage, although a state-appointed panel has been gathering public input and is due to report...

BLACKSBURG, Va. - The Virginia Tech classroom wing where a student gunman killed 30 people and himself and wounded two dozen others last spring will be turned into a place to study peace, the school announced Thursday. Having vowed never again to use Norris Hall for general classes, school officials said the rooms will house the new Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.

BLACKSBURG -- Several thousands people gathered on Virginia Tech’s Drillfield this morning to form a giant message of thanks to the world for its support after the April 16 massacre. Photos of the event are posted on hokiesthanktheworld.org. Dressed in the school colors of maroon and orange, and surrounded by fall foliage of the same hues along the Blue Ridge Mountains, the crowd was arranged to form Tech’s "VT" logo, and under it, "THANKS YOU." At 11:10 a.m., a satellite aimed to capture the image as the thousands waved up at the sky.

Burlington, Vt., Jul 16, 2007 / 10:46 am (CNA).- The Latin Mass will be made available to those Vermont Catholics who seek it, Bishop Salvatore Matano announced in a July 6th letter to the faithful in his diocese. The bishop made the announcement, following Pope Benedict XVI’s recent universal approval of the 1962 Latin Mass."I will consult with our council of priests ... to determine the most suitable manner for making the 'extraordinary form' of the Sacred Liturgy available to those who request it," wrote Bishop Matano.Latin Masses will be offered occasionally around the state based on worshippers' requests. However,...

State Police searching Virginia Tech duck pond By Dawn Jefferies / 10 On Your Side Jun 25, 2007 It was here, at the Virginia Tech duck pond witnesses reported seeing Seung Hui Cho the morning of April 16th. Today, the duck pond is being drained. Virginia state police say they're leaving no stone unturned. Back in April, 10 on your side was there when teams searched the area, only saying it was a routine part of the investigation. Teams will come out and search this area again but they have to wait until the water drains. Last week, the Washington...

MONTPELIER, Vt. --At Riverwalk Records, the all-vinyl record store just down the street from the state Capitol, the black "US Out of Vt.!" T-shirts are among the hottest sellers. But to some people in Vermont, the idea is bigger than a $20 novelty. They want Vermont to secede from the United States -- peacefully, of course. Disillusioned by what they call an empire about to fall, a small cadre of writers and academics is plotting political strategy and planting the seeds of separatism. They've published a "Green Mountain Manifesto" subtitled "Why and How Tiny Vermont Might Help Save America From...

WEST RUTLAND, Vt. (The Vermont Catholic Tribune) – When Father Adam Krempa sits down for a light meal, he enjoys a bowl of cottage cheese drizzled with honey, seeded rye bread lightly toasted with butter – not margarine – and a cup of coffee with a heaping teaspoon of honey."It's like dying and having lunch with the Lord," said the pastor of St. Raphael Church in Poultney, Vt. It's not the toast or even the butter that makes the meal special. It's the honey. For 40 years Father Krempa has been keeping bees at his family homestead here on Valley...

A MESSAGE FROM THE PRESIDENT OF THE SILVER STAR FAMILIES OF AMERICA My Friends My name is Steve Newton and I am the President of the Silver Star Families of America. The Silver Star Families of American was born to recognize, remember and assist the wounded of our armed forces from all wars. We honor and remember our wounded primarily by the presentation of Silver Star Banners, certificates and letters to our Wounded or their families. The tradition of the Silver Star for the Wounded dates back to 1917 when people used to sew over a Blue Star with Silver...

US Muslims Told Not to Pray for Non-Muslim VT Victims... Liberal Arab Website Reports: Debate on Virginia Tech Muslims Students' Mailing List Concerning Permissibility of Praying for Mercy for Non-Muslim Victims The liberal Arabic-language website Aafaq reports that a Muslim student set off a debate when she sent an email to the mailing list of a Muslim students' association (rabitat al-tullab al-muslimin) at Virginia Tech asking the students to pray that Allah have mercy on those killed and wounded in the shooting attack at the university. According to Aafaq, the dean of student affairs at American International University, Abu Hamza...

by Phyllis Schlafly, May 9, 2007 What was the motive behind 23-year-old Cho Seung-Hui's killing of 32 students and teachers at Virginia Tech? Why was he consumed with hate, resentment and bitterness? Cho was an English Department major and senior. As a frequent lecturer on college campuses, I have discovered that the English Departments are often the weirdest and/or the most leftwing. A look at the websites of Virginia Tech's English Department and of its professors reveals their mindset. We don't yet know which courses Cho took, but it could have been any of these. Did he take Professor Bernice...

ALBANY -- A renowned poet who taught the Virginia Tech killer found his presence so intimidating it felt like he was "controlling my classroom," the professor said in an interview. . . . The evening wasn't all solemn, though. Giovanni's often profane jokes about men, Jesus, and especially the Bush administration kept the crowd in stitches, though most of them can't be printed in a family newspaper. And from this article:But it wasn't what the celebrated poet said about the massacre that provoked one of the loudest reactions from her audience of University at Albany students Thursday. What really got...

We Mourn Students, But Not Soldiers April 26, 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It never occurred to me there was any disconnect in President Bush's order that flags be flown at half-staff to honor the memory of 32 students and faculty gunned down at Virginia Tech. It was, I believed at the time, the fitting tribute of a nation, united in grief, over the slaughter of so many young and talented people. I still believe President Bush did the right thing. But now I'm also troubled by the disconnect: Why are flags flown half-staff to mourn slain students, yet never flown half-staff to...

My oldest goes to college in Virginia. Fortunately, he is at the University of Virginia — not Virginia Tech — so when the news of the shooting broke, and I started getting concerned calls from friends, I had general anxiety, not the frightening and personal one I’m sure the parents of students at Blacksburg felt. Afterward, I spoke with my sons about it — two are in college and one in fifth grade. I spent time reassuring the 10-year-old that he was more likely to be badly injured by bee stings than by something like this. And as I watched...

GamePolitics.com is reporting that United States District Judge Paul C. Huck has dismissed anti-video game crusader Jack Thompson's lawsuit against Gawker Media, the publisher of gaming blog Kotaku. Thompson had claimed that Kotaku and Gawker Media had failed to honor his requests to remove "threatening" comments from several of their blog posts that were critical of his eagerness to blame video games for the tragic Virginia Tech shootings earlier this month. On Wednesday, Thompson had added the blog publishing company, which also operates other popular blogs like Gizmodo, Wonkette, and Valleywag, to a list of defendants in a suit he...

In the wake of an event such as Virginia Tech, our system moves heaven and earth to figure out what went wrong and how to make sure it doesn't happen again. This of course is what we did after September 11 and after the botched response to Hurricane Katrina. Here's what's really unnerving about this inevitable "process": In June 2000, the Bremer Report of the National Commission on Terrorism described virtually everything we needed to know about preparing for the kind of attack that occurred in September 2001. Similarly--and you can guess what you're about to read--in 2002 the Final...

AMERICANS BELIEVE that for every problem there is a solution. If we think and work hard enough, we believe we can solve every problem. Of course, we also live with the obdurate presence of contingency and uncertainty. We know that too, for we believe in Murphy's Law. But the media assume that this tragedy was avoidable and start blaming: the administrators were negligent despite the fact that their hands were tied. The gun store should never have sold firearms to Seung-Hui Cho. All relevant information concerning mentally ill persons should be known to the police and to gun store operators,...

Are the Virginia Tech murders the latest evolution of a strain of violence embodied in radical Islamist terrorism? Post-9/11, terrorism inspired by al Qaeda has been devolving in a progression that can best be described as from the caliphate to Columbine. That is to say, from a pseudo-religious political movement to nihilist acts of destruction. Welcome to the McJihad. Osama bin Laden and the other founders of al Qaeda are now more destructive as a global brand than they could ever hope to be as tactical terrorists. After al Qaeda’s success on 9/11, the media and the Internet presented them...

How to prevent next massacre -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: April 17, 2007 1:00 a.m. Eastern Like most Americans yesterday, I had the TV on from the moment the Virginia Tech slaughter broke. After the death toll was established at 33, the focus of reporting and analysis shifted to the how and the why of this national tragedy. I heard the following questions and statements raised: How can we prevent this from taking place on another campus? Why is it that these massacres seem to be happening more frequently at schools and colleges? There is little more we can do in an open...

BAGHDAD - Students in Baghdad, where universities have been hard hit by violence, said Monday they were saddened by last week's massacre at Virginia Tech and hung up a banner to express their solidarity with "our brothers in humanity and in pursuing knowledge." "We want to let the whole world know that we do not support terrorism anywhere," said Yassir Nazar, head of the student union at Baghdad Technology University, who organized the hanging of the banner near the campus gate. It reads, "We, the students of Technology University, denounce the attack at Virginia Tech. We extend our condolences to...

The terrible slaughter that recently occurred at a university in Virginia caused a predictable reaction in France. On all TV channels, there are inquiries into the “violence” created by American society, into the ease with which one can obtain weapons in the United States, and into the “all-powerful gun lobby.” It’s the same thing in the print media. With a delicate, often self-characterizing hypocrisy, Le Monde, in an unsigned editorial, stresses that it would be “unjust and false” to dwell on an image of America given by “outbursts of murderous insanity to which isolated individuals yield,” but immediately adds that...

What can we do about psychopathic warning signs? There are dangerous, vicious people among us, a recognition that ought to be the starting point of any policy aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings. In the case of Mark Barton, the disgruntled investor who shot up an Atlanta day-trading shop in 1999, he had left a trail of police officers, insurance investigators, in-laws, neighbors and former employers, who knew he was a psychopath and suspected he was a killer, though police had never been able to make a case against him. In the case of Salvador Tapia, who shot up a...

Within hours of the Virginia Tech massacre, the New York Times had identified the problem: ''What is needed, urgently, is stronger controls over the lethal weapons that cause such wasteful carnage and such unbearable loss.'' --snip--The "gun-free zone" fraud isn't just about banning firearms or even a symptom of academia's distaste for an entire sensibility of which the Second Amendment is part and parcel but part of a deeper reluctance of critical segments of our culture to engage with reality. Michelle Malkin wrote a column a few days ago connecting the prohibition against physical self-defense with "the erosion of intellectual...

Though it's unclear if he told anyone about his plans to stage a shooting rampage at Virginia Tech, from childhood, Seung-Hui Cho showed an appetite for brutality, according to a new report. The Washington Post reports that while Cho was unusually quiet as a child — according to relatives, he refused to respond to greetings and didn't want to be hugged — when he fought with his older sister, Sun-Kyung Cho, his actions spoke volumes. Relatives say he punched her with shocking force. Despite signs of trouble, Cho's mother didn't seek treatment for him because he did well in school,...

An Emmanuel College professor has been fired after re-enacting the Virginia Tech massacre in his classroom in order to air a pro-gun viewpoint that offended students at the Catholic liberal arts school, the professor charged yesterday. Nicholas Winset said he was terminated and permanently barred from campus following a Wednesday lecture in which he dramatized the massacre to show that deranged gunman Cho Seung-Hui could have been stopped if another student had been carrying a gun. “If there were more guns in society, the response time to the (rampage) might have been much faster,” said Winset, an adjunct professor of...

Democrats Strangely Silent On Gun Control April 19, 2007 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On gun control, how times have changed. Not so long ago, the lament was: Why does it take a massacre like Columbine to prompt any action on gun control? Today, the lament is: Why won’t a school massacre as bad as Virginia Tech prompt any action on gun control? Listen carefully. That sound you hear are chickens cackling — chickens, also known as Democrats, running away from the issue of limiting access to guns. Isn’t it sad? In the wake of the mass murder at Virginia Tech, not one Democratic...

We are Virginia Tech We are sad today We will be sad for quite a while We are not moving on We are embracing our mourning We are Virginia Tech We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly We are brave enough to bend to cry And we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again We are Virginia Tech We do not understand this tragedy We know we did nothing to deserve it But neither does a child in Africa Dying of AIDS Neither do the Invisible Children Walking the night away to avoid being captured by...

Colleges face dilemma deciding fate of mentally ill students http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA042007.01A.campus.mental.health.35bbf82.html http://tinyurl.com/3xtbcl Web Posted: 04/20/2007 12:30 AM CDT Melissa Ludwig Express-News Campus administrators, health professionals and police, caught between federal privacy and anti-discrimination laws and the need to protect their campuses, face a daunting challenge deciding the fate of mentally ill students. Before 23-year-old Virginia Tech student Cho Seung-Hui gunned down 32 students and teachers Monday, his violent, lurid work in a creative writing class sparked a string of efforts to get him help. In 2005, after complaints from two female students that Cho was harassing them and a tip that...

Stuck When I first heard about the Virginia Tech murders I was driving home from work and at that time there was not information about who the shooter was. My first thought was what a sad and senseless tragedy this was, and all I wanted to do was go home and hug my kids. The next morning I found out the killer was Korean and the first thought I had was, Every Asian man in the United States must be terrified right now. And the second thought was When will the retaliation begin? It didn't take long, as it turns...

Thirty-two fine young men and women are dead and that is a huge tragedy. It is also, however, a tragedy that the death toll could have been substantially lower if it were not for an absurd law that kept the students and faculty from exercising their Constitutional right to protect themselves and others by bearing arms on campus. Thanks to that law a madman was able to confront the men and women at Virginia Tech secure in the knowledge that he was armed while his victims were unarmed and defenseless. One of those victims used the only weapon he had...

Cornellians in Sage Chapel fell silent April 19 as the university organist struck the first notes of a prelude in a ceremony memorializing the 33 students and faculty at Virginia Tech university who had lost their lives three days earlier in a campus shooting by a Korean student, who subsequently killed himself."We are one," said Cornell President David Skorton. "We are one community, one people, one planet. We are here today to affirm that oneness ... We are here to bear witness to the passing of the 33 members of our family at Virginia Tech University who have met an...

Fred Phelps and the rest of the psychos at westboro baptist church have announced that they're going to protest the funerals of the Virginia Tech students. Apparently they've officially announced they're protesting at the funeral for Ryan Clark, and all these students have gotten together on Facebook and are planning on standing silently between the protesters and the families at these funerals. I'm not sure if the Patriot Guard is going to be at any of the funerals.

Long before he boiled over, Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui was pushed around and laughed at as a schoolboy in suburban Washington because of his shyness and the strange, mumbly way he talked, former classmates say. Chris Davids, a Virginia Tech senior who graduated from Westfield High School in Chantilly, Va., with Cho in 2003, recalled that the South Korean immigrant almost never opened his mouth and would ignore attempts to strike up a conversation. Once, in English class, the teacher had the students read aloud, and when it was Cho's turn, he just looked down in silence, Davids recalled....

They couldn't wait those guncontrol fanatics. The bodies weren't even cold when the liberals and the Democrats ran to the radio and TV to say the Virginia Tech massacre proves we need gun control laws or to abolish guns. Have they no shame! Here is the link: http://www.thebulletin.us/site/news.cfm?newsid=18234415&BRD=2737&PAG=461&dept_id=576361&rfi=6